A Jagged Smile
by Soulless Thinker
Summary: A little tour through Johnny's mind; a mess of memories, misery, and awful, awful dreams.
1. Fever Dreams

Title of your fic

A Jagged Smile

Author name and email

Soulless Thinker

SoullessThinker@netscape.net

Genre

General/Angst

Rating

R

Main Characters in your fic

Nny

A Brief Description

A little tour through Johnny's mind; a mess of memories, misery, and awful, awful dreams.

Author's Notes

At each big space, Johnny is changing: dreaming, in the past, or in the present. Also, a great deal of this story has Johnny in various phases of personality. If I made line breaks, it would be too easy. I guess it's violent. Personally, I think it is rather normal. Oh and all the scenes are important. This is merely an introduction.

Chapter 1: Fever Dreams

There is something utterly glorious in the fear and pain of another. This sometimes opinion became true for him as he slowly pushed the knitting needle into the pliant flesh. The woman squealed, trying to escape, shaking and jerking against the implements that held her. It was curious, how much they resisted. After all, in movies and such the hero would always stand unflinching. Perhaps the damsel in the distress would cry or shake or proposition the foul captor depending on what type of film it was. But in real life? People don't hold up a good facade when half stabbed to a wall. Whimpering, red-faced and shaking, the woman was desperately trying to edge away from the needle, and as it went through, she howled, wept and tore at it. But it did go through. He smiled and picked up the hammer. The sniveling woman was transfixed by the hammer and began a high-pitched wail that became a scream as the hammer punched the needle farther through the bleeding broken bone and muscle and into the wooden wall. The man giggled, a rough tenor, and felt his face twist into a grin. He toyed with her recently impaled hand, moving the fake, long nails back and forth. She was continuing to cry rather pathetically. He added a bit of pressure and the nail snapped at the base. She screamed. 

It was funny; she had been down in his basement for several hours, being nailed and metallically attached to the wall. Impaled by sewing needles, nails, scissors, screws, large toothpicks, pencils (that had failed, but there were still little bits of wood and graphite in her left arm and on the floor), screwdrivers and good ol' fashioned hooks, the very painful method of death was a personal favorite. Yet ironically, she had not truly screamed until now. She tended to howl in agony, but this? This was sharp and clear.

He liked it. He broke the finger quickly in his capable hands. She screamed again. Delicious. He broke nails, fingers, toes, everything. 

And he awoke with that beautiful scream in his ears. 

Stumbling off his floor where he'd unwillingly submitted to exhaustion, he shuffled to the bathroom in a daze and knelt next to toilet. Hot, stinking bile and vomit fell from his nose and mouth. He let it fall and, eventually, drip away, while sweat and tears wet his face. He was cold and felt like he had died. Again. The knowledge that he was shit overwhelmed him. In the dream, he had liked it. Of all things, he liked it. He sniffled and fell away from the bowl. Staring up at the metal sink, he pounded his head against the floor as he cried. He had liked it. He curled into a ball, face wet with all horrible fluids and shivered. He was so cold.

Johnny tugged at the suit, annoyed. He hated picture day. He sat in the back of the auditorium with his class; backpack in hand. In his science notebook, he started to draw the place around him. It had a little twist, just like he himself. The auditorium of the sketch was one many years after a war or disaster; messily drawn bodies lying on the rows of chairs and flowers and vines clinging to the pillars under the risers. He frowned. Ripping the paper in two almost equal halves, he compulsively ripped the paper into many little squares. He pushed the mass into a pocket of his backpack. It was filled with thousands of squares. The class obeyed some unheard signal and started to file out of the rows. Johnny plunged the notebook back into the bag and got up, last in line. Again. He would be in the front of the picture, too. Like always. Again and again: the smallest, the thinnest, the shortest, the weakest. He hated it. Hated the shoves, hated the fact that he read and wrote and draw made them call him gay and fag and queer. Hated the fact that they pushed him when no one looked; hated that they had started to do it even when someone did look. Hated the prods and kicks and whispers.

And he hated picture day. 

"His black suit and tie made him look like a good boy, a little gentleman," said Mother. Right, mom. Right, you believe that. 'Cause ya won't believe how many times I got choked with that stupid tie today. Won't know how many backhanded comments the teachers said. Why did he bother to listen anymore?

The front of the line. He hated it.

A walk, he needed a walk. People. Talking. Disgust, sadness, something, anything. He'd see a movie- was anything there that didn't look like the normal action idiocy? Yes, something. Something must be playing; something was always playing. He walked out of 777, cold and small and scared, for no reason. No earthly cause. Several minutes later, the suburban nightmare gave way to an urban sprawl. Apartment buildings, hair 'salons', nails, clothes, bars, churches. Life.

And then, the movie theatre. It was a small, one-theatre deal, with popcorn and very few ushers. And midnight showings. It was some ghastly gothic flick, by the looks of the arriving audience. He squinted up. Nope, he didn't know it. But he'd see it, something to pass the time. God, this was lon- no. He would not talk. A resolve came over him. Maybe it was the lights down, or the cold breeze or the fake glittering earrings in the pale faces, or all of them. But he suddenly felt stronger, and in his mind, he was smiling. 

The flick was short, rather gory and truly the worst thing he'd ever seen. And yet... It had some pathetic excuse for life in it. An actress attempting fear; an allegedly badass actor trying to play himself. He was a conceited snot. But for something about that was reassuring. 

He stared at the paper. He could not believe it. Fuck. He had talent; enough to hole himself up and live without the rest of the world. Enough to occupy his mind, most of the time. He would sit in his little apartment and draw. Eyes, mostly. Some mouths, ears, wounds, vague bodies. But it was really just the eyes. He picked up the pencil and ripped it through the drawing paper. Anger and frustration taking command, he took the pencil and began to plunge it into his own flesh. It hurt, but he couldn't feel pain. A flow of blood trickled from the spot he had stabbed and tore at. He splashed it and flicked it at the destroyed picture. A laugh bubbled out of his mouth as a high giggling and he rolled down, laughing as leers ran down his face. He stayed like this until the laughter slowed and died. But the tears continued. No! He would stop this! He had control of himself; he got up fast and turned o stare at the picture. 

It wasn't so bad, he saw. An eye, split diagonal by a jagged scar, splattered with blood. A toothy grin glowed into the night.

AN: Fever Dreams is essentially the whole story, parts of the whole story, and none of the whole story. Yes, Johnny is insane. No, he's not this kind of insane. No, this does not mean this whole thing is a fever dream. *smiles* Only some parts of it. Email the loon: SoullessThinker@netscape.net


	2. Rays of the Sun

A Jagged Smile  
Destroyed by Soulless Thinker  
  
Contact SoullessThinker@netscape.net  
  
Genre General/Angst  
  
Rating R  
  
A Brief Description  
A little tour through Johnny's mind; a mess of memories, misery, and awful, awful dreams. There is a *second* created.   
  
General Author's Notes  
At each big space, Johnny is changing: dreaming, in the past, or in the present. Also, a great deal of this story has Johnny in various phases of personality. If I made line breaks, it would be too easy. I guess it's violent. Personally, I think it is rather normal. Oh and all the scenes are important. This is merely an introduction.  
  
  
  
Disclaimer  
The boy is not mine. The victims are mine. The rays of the sun are Apollo's.  
  
AN: I slept for an hour last night. It's 1:50 am. Yet I am very awake and horribly fat. How nice. Another day, another mood. Feel the love and let time flow. A worse day. Summer is gone. I was feeling a bit violent. Whoops. This might be NC17. Tell me what you think.  
  
"I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death."  
-Francis Bacon  
  
Chapter 2- Rays of the Sun  
  
The alleyways weren't as silent as to be expected. People talk of light pollution, but it was sound pollution that more disturbed Johnny. There was no absolute silence anymore. Always some alarm or cell phone or car or talking. Or, in this case, muffled screams for help. Johnny had followed the man from the bar. He was dragging behind him a thoroughly drunken girl, conversing to someone in her own mind, and his eyes narrowed at the all-too-familiar situation. The man dragged her to an alleyway and held her shoulders against the wall with one hand. With the other, he slowly loosened her jeans and slid them down her thighs. She had rather pale thighs, looking sickly in the odd moonlight. Johnny walked very quietly behind him, long thin knife in hand. The man stole a sloppy kiss from the protesting woman, her increasingly frenzied babbling muted for a moment. While kissing, he dropped a finger down into her underwear and elicited some response from her. Even inebriated, her eyes bulged and she looked faintly ill, the half-tanned, half-pale skin shining with a green hue. He unhooked the button of his jeans and started to push down his boxers. Johnny crouched and moved behind him. The man's pants down completely; he pushed her panties off with both hands and Johnny pushed the knife right through the man's balls and lopping off his genitals with a tiny push to the right, left and forward. The man's penis hit the dirty ground in a little thump.  
There was a pause.  
Then screaming began in earnest.   
  
  
  
Empty and bland and dusty. He stared blankly out of the boarded window. It wasn't boredom that went through him, but some form of nothingness that persuaded him to move and crack his neck. The wall was drying, he noticed out of the back of his eye. How nice. It was nothing, of course. He would go out now, the thought said. His face tried twitched; a misbegotten smile. Tugging a trench coat over him, Johnny opened the door and faced the world. It was Sunday, the church bells disturbing a nice morning. He thought with a great clarity even after a sleepless two months and decided to pass on the church. Too much noise for his taste. But in the city? He found someone immediately; a short girl with long, blonde braids. She was chewing gum and blabbing on into her cell phone. She hung up with a final squeak and sat down, pouting. He grabbed a hold of the gutter pipe and climbed to a first-floor window. Feet inside of the building, he hung outside and put a gloved hand over her mouth and pulled the blade across her throat. The blood spurted out and showered the shady little driveway. He waited until the red sap had finished trickling out and then silently left her sitting there. This next one he would take home. Pizza boy? No, no. It was Sunday, and Pastor Norman was speaking. He couldn't waste and opportunity like this, no, no, no. And like a mindless puppet, he crept towards the church, not seeing the insect in his eyes.  
  
  
  
  
Goggling at him was obviously a good alternative to thinking. Ms. Sophie was wiping the board while half the class fixated on her ass, some on the assignment and some on the scary boy on the corner. A paper ball hit him in the forehead. Johnny didn't even look up anymore. And then- a laser in his eye. Red, blinding red. He got up, and the laser followed him. He felt a cauldron of fear in his stomach bubble and stream into his mouth. His eye felt funny. Sitting down, he faced the wall and shut his eyes, miserable with his awareness of the tears dripping past his chin. A boy started to do something that resembled laughter. It was loud and harsh and bit him. Little shouts were ripping apart the larger boy's mouth. The murmuring turned into talking and jeers while the future pornography renting public looked at the little loser crying. God, what a fucking queer, they thought. Loud comments filled the room and Johnny tried to not listen. He wasn't hearing them, they were animals, they weren't real. What they said wasn't in English; it was the frightened screaming of chimpanzees. Gross, ungainly, ugly, horrible and wrong. He was fine. Sniffling quietly, he pushed the tears away and put his head down on his desk. They were nothing.  
  
  
  
  
Puking blood. Two words don't begin to cover it. Twin snakes of food were bathed in a slimy bile. Red eyes, scales, a fat feast of pig in throats and bellies, they took it all it and the lumps of food squirmed out, still living. It was lard and those disgusting people outside who were sitting and rotting on the floor right now. It wasn't him anymore, he was clean, neat, thin, better. So what, the bile was red and his nose was itchy and his head throbbed as though a jackhammer was ripping through his skull. He bent down again, hair blocking his eyes and felt the snakes and pigs leave him. He sat for a while, biting his tongue, and got up to splash light brown water into his face. He looked up into the mirror and stared. This was assuredly not Johnny. No. This was a corpse. He looked down at the pile of vomit that no longer was a snake and pig joined together in holy symbiosis. It was simply a pile of redigested food bathed in stomach acid. Yes, it was bloody, but it was mostly the Cherry Doom brainfreezies that had made it appear to be the child of consumption. He looked up again at the bloody boy and tried to smile or frown or do something. It seemed his body wasn't obeying him anymore. How nice.   
  
  
AN: Rays of the sun is a reference to a Greek myth, in which Apollo (the god of light) and his sister, Artemis (the goddess of the moon), find a mortal queen named Niobe who insults their mortal mother (Leto) by saying she is better because she has 7 boys and 7 girls, while Leto only has one of each. This is rule number one of things not to do in a Greek myth. Artemis kills the girls quietly and painlessly in their sleep with the rays of the moon. But Apollo kills the boys painfully with the rays of the sun. Niobe, the bitch queen, lives to deal with it.   
  
I like Greek myths.  
  
Oh and Ms. Sophie? *sweatdrop* I forgot Sophie's last name from Sophie's Choice. I hated Sophie; she was an idiot. And flippant, callous, shallow and self-absorbed. But I liked Nathan, the insane asshole and Stingo, the naive sex-obsessed boy.  
  
E-mail me: SoullessThinker@netscape.net/  
  
I crave words. 


End file.
